Tag Archives: culture

Chapter 5: Evidence in History

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We’re going through James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World chapter by chapter over the next few weeks. Here’s the abstract of chapter 5 “Evidence in History” from Hunter’s website:

The alternative view of cultural change that assigns roles not only to ideas but also to elites, networks, technology, and new institutions, provides a much better account of the growth in plausibility and popularity of these important cultural developments. This is the evidence of history—particularly clear in an overview of key moments in church history and the rise of the Enlightenment and its various manifestations. Change in culture or civilization simply does not occur when there is change in the beliefs and values in the hearts and minds of ordinary people or in the creation of mere artifacts.

http://jamesdavisonhunter.com/to-change-the-world/chapter-abstracts/

OK, I’ll admit it. This chapter bothered me. Again, looking back, I can see that Hunter wasn’t really advocating what he was describing, he was merely reporting what had happened. In his description of the spread of Christianity, he in no way shows how the world changed the church even as the church was changing the world. In later essays, he’ll make it clear that that very thing is inevitable; you are always changed in some way by the very thing you seek to change. This especially applies to the church when it tries to use the ways of the world to change the world.

Getting back to the book, Hunter in this chapter traces key moments in church history and shows how the changes brought about at those times were top-down, institutionally-driven changes, rather than “grassroots” movements. Changes in beliefs and values don’t bring about culture change, nor does the production of artifacts (books, movies, etc.). As Hunter states, “ideas can have revolutionary and world-changing consequences and yet they appear to do so only when the kinds of structural conditions described here are in place.” (p. 78)

In the end, this chapter merely provides the historical evidence to back up the propositions of the last chapter.

Chapter 4: An Alternative View of Culture and Cultural Change

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We’re going through James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World chapter by chapter over the next few weeks. My primary reason for this is purely selfish… I want to use some of this material in the future, and this is a good way to force myself to analyze it and preserve the important parts.

Here’s the abstract of chapter 4 “An Alternative View of Culture and Cultural Change” from Hunter’s website:

Ideas do have consequences in history, yet not because those ideas are inherently truthful or obviously correct but rather because of the ways they are embedded in very powerful institutions, networks, interests, and symbols. Cultures are very resistant to change, but they do change under specific conditions.

http://jamesdavisonhunter.com/to-change-the-world/chapter-abstracts/

This chapter centers around 11 propositions, seven on culture and four on cultural change. The propositions are:

  1. Culture is a system of truth claims and moral obligations
  2. Culture is a product of history
  3. Culture is intrinsically dialectical
  4. Culture is a resource and a form of power
  5. Cultural production and symbolic power are stratified in a fairly rigid structure of “center” and “periphery”
  6. Culture is generated within networks
  7. Culture is neither autonomous nor fully coherent
  8. Cultures change from the top down, rarely from the bottom up
  9. Change is typically initiated by elites who are outside of the centermost positions of prestige
  10. World-changing is most concentrated when the networks of elites and the institutions they lead overlap
  11. Cultures change, but rarely if ever without a fight

The chapter ends with the statement:

Christians will not engage the culture effectively, much less hope to change it, without attention to the factors here.

When first reading, I’m a little baffled at this point. Hunter still sounds like he’s advocating that Christians set out to change the world, yet the means he’s suggesting don’t fit with what I understand to be the Christian way. Actually, Hunter is merely laying a roadmap to proper engagement of culture, but that will only be clear (at least to me) at a later point in the book.

So what do you think of Hunter’s propositions?

Chapter 3: The Failure of the Common View

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We’re going through James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World chapter by chapter over the next few weeks. My primary reason for this is purely selfish… I want to use some of this material in the future, and this is a good way to force myself to analyze it and preserve the important parts.

Here’s the abstract of chapter 3 “The Failure of the Common View” from Hunter’s website:

If cultures were simply a matter of hearts and minds, then the influence of various minorities—whoever they are and whatever that may be—would be relatively insignificant. But they are not. The real problem of this working theory of culture and cultural change and the strategies that derive from it is idealism—that something non-physical is the primary reality. Idealism has three features in this view: ideas, individualism, and pietism. However, idealism misconstrues agency; underplays the importance of history; ignores the way culture is generated, coordinated, and organized; and imputes a logic and rationality to culture. Every strategy and tactic for changing the world that is based upon this working theory of culture and cultural change will fail—not most of these strategies, but all.

http://jamesdavisonhunter.com/to-change-the-world/chapter-abstracts/

In this chapter, Hunter talks about the apparent problem, the one articulated by “world change” advocates. This apparent problem has two parts: (1) Christians aren’t fervent enough; (2) There aren’t enough Christians who really embrace God’s call. Hunter argues that the real idea is what he calls “idealism,” the concept that what is real is the non-physical. The material world exists but what has “greater ontological significance” are ideas. To illustrate this concept, Hunter quotes Charles Colson as saying, “history is little more than the recording of the rise and fall of the great ideas—the worldviews—that form our values and move us to act.” According to Hunter, this is the belief of most American Christians.

Hunter argues that this fails to take into account the material realities that drive culture. It ignores the “institutional nature of culture” and overlooks the fact that structure is “embedded in structures of power.” (p. 27)

In a coda, this chapter looks at Andy Crouch’s teachings about “culture as artifact,” culture being defined by the goods it produces. Hunter admits that this view overcomes the dualism of the primary view, but it doesn’t recognize the structures holding culture up.

Both of these views, idealism and “culture as artifact” focus on the individual, rather than the church. Hunter insists that there must be an alternative view. That view will be expressed in later chapters.

Chapter 2: Culture: The Common View

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We’re going through James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World chapter by chapter over the next few weeks. My primary reason for this is purely selfish… I want to use some of this material in the future, and this is a good way to force myself to analyze it and preserve the important parts.

Here’s the abstract of chapter 2 “Culture: The Common View” from Hunter’s website:

The “common view” is that culture is made up of the accumulation of values held by the majority of people and the choices made on the basis of those values. If a culture is good, it is because the good values embraced by individuals lead to good choices. If people’s hearts and minds are converted, they will have the right values, they will make the right choices and culture will change in turn. Common View Summary: 1) Real change is individual, 2) Cultural changed can be willed into being, and 3) Change is democratic—from the bottom-up by ordinary citizens.

http://jamesdavisonhunter.com/to-change-the-world/chapter-abstracts/

The style of this chapter is quite interesting. You go through the whole chapter with Hunter making a case for this view, presenting the evidence to support, quoting from a wide range of religious leaders. In the next-to-the-last paragraph, Hunter says:

At the end of the day, the message is clear: even if not in the lofty realms of political life that he was called to, you too can be a Wilberforce. … If you have the courage and hold to the right values and if you think Christianly with an adequate Christian worldview, you too can change the world. (To Change The World, pp.16-17)

Then he drops the bombshell:

This account is almost wholly mistaken. (p. 17)

I’ll admit, the last sentence came as quite a relief. I mean, on the one hand, I understand the importance of worldview and its role in culture. Yet so much of what Hunter seemed to be advocating was the “rah, rah, let’s make this nation Christian again” rhetoric that mixes spirituality with nationalism. My interest in the book rose as I realized Hunter was not going to repeat the usual mantras of Americanized Christianity.

Little did I know that Hunter had in store several more roller coasters of expectations for his unsuspecting readers.

I know it’s early on to react to much of what Hunter is saying (since he’s mainly presenting views he doesn’t agree with), but I’d like to know if I’ve explained his point well enough for you to see what he’s saying. Feel free to ask questions. I’ll do my best to answer according to the content of the book, not just my own ideas.

Chapter 1: The Christian Faith and the Task of World-Changing

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On Friday, I gave an overview of James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World. I want to go through Hunter’s material chapter by chapter over the next few weeks. My primary reason for this is purely selfish… I want to use some of this material in the future, and this is a good way to force myself to analyze it and preserve the important parts.

However, I also believe in slow cooking here in the Kitchen, so this step by step process will help us all to be able to comment on Hunter’s thoughts as we go along. To get us started, let me quote the abstract of Chapter 1 “The Christian Faith and the Task of World-Changing” from the author’s website:

Human beings are, by divine intent and their very nature, world-makers. People fulfill their individual and collective destiny in the art, music, literature, commerce, law, and scholarship they cultivate, the relationships they build, and in the institutions they develop—the families, churches, associations, communities they live in and sustain—as they reflect the good of God and His designs for flourishing.

Hunter contends that the dominant ways of thinking about culture and cultural change are flawed, for they are based upon both specious social science and problematic theology. The model upon which various strategies are based not only does not work, but it cannot work. On the basis of this working theory, Christians cannot “change the world” in a way that they, even in their diversity, desire.

http://jamesdavisonhunter.com/to-change-the-world/chapter-abstracts/

This is a short chapter. (To be honest, the abstract seems disproportionately long). The chapter begins with a reference to creation and to the mandate given in Genesis 2:15—“The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Hunter says that the two main Hebrew verbs in this sentence mean (1) work, nurture, sustain, husband; and (2) safeguard, preserve, care for, protect. (As I went through the book, I was disappointed to find that this initial use of Scripture in the opening paragraphs is not a sign of things to come. Most of the book is the analysis of a social scientist, not a theologian.) This creation mandate, the book affirms, requires Christians to be engaged with their world, actively trying to make it better.

Hunter points out numerous Christian groups that mention changing the world as one of their primary aims. He included Abilene Christian University in the list, I guess because of the “Change the World” fundraising campaign from early this century. The rest of this essay will focus on showing that Christian efforts to change the world are based on an erroneous assumption about how the world changes.